Aylett Raines: Removing a Diminutive Pimple

Aylett Raines: Removing a Diminutive Pimple

Aylett Raines (1798-1881) was one of the early figures of the Restoration Movement. Before learning the truth, he was a Universalist. This meant he believed that all men would be saved. However, as is evident from the quote below, he learned the truth and was able to expose the fallacy of the Universalist theory of salvation.

The divine threatenings are intended to inspire believers with this fear. Without it we can never appreciate the value of the gift of Christ, or the worth of our redemption. The patient must know the malignity of his malady, in order to appreciate the skill of the physician who cures him. Now, it is through the threatenings that we are, to a great extent, made acquainted with the malignity and direful consequences of sin, and that we learn the value of the grace of God, in sending one ‘able to save to the uttermost all them that come unto God by him.’ Our Savior proceeds upon this principle, when he says that ‘he who has much forgiven, will love much.’ We have here the reason why Universalists, with all their preaching of the love of God, can not induce sinners to love God, nor to reform their lives. Sin is comparatively a trifle. They fail to teach the threatenings in their Scriptural and awful import; and hence their effort to cure the moral maladies of mankind are as if a quack should attempt to cure all the diseases of the country by the application of sugar; or as if a doctor should labor to excite me to infinite gratitude by reminding me that he had removed from my face a diminutive pimple!” (A Refutation of Hereditary Total Depravity, p. 115).

This is an interesting observation, particularly because it comes from a former Universalist. Raines recognized the deficiency of the theory. If there is no threat of punishment from God, there is no real reason to obey Him.

While the grace and love of God are popular topics, they are not the complete message of the gospel. If that is all we teach, then we cannot, as Raines said, “induce sinners to love God, nor to reform their lives.” Paul said, “The kindness of God leads you to repentance” (Romans 2:4); but it is only able to do so because we know that God is also “storing up wrath” for those who refuse to repent (Romans 2:5).

In order to appreciate the love of God and the gift of salvation by His grace, we need to understand why salvation is necessary. That reason is sin. Sin is what separates us from God (Isaiah 59:2). Sin is what causes spiritual death (Romans 6:23). Those who are not saved and, therefore, receive the punishment for their sins will be told to “depart…into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). This is described elsewhere as “the lake of fire [which] is the second death” (Revelation 20:14).

That punishment that awaits us for sin is not something that anyone in his right mind will want to experience. We can escape it through the grace of God (Ephesians 2:8) by obeying His will (Hebrews 5:9). Yet if we ignore the reality of eternal punishment, there is no real incentive to repudiate sin and serve the Lord. Yes, we should obey Him out of love (1 John 5:3); but without the threat of punishment, it is too easy to fall back to doing what we want to do rather than what God wants us to do.


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